So Pirate and I will be attending BossLady's (and her sweetie's) wedding on August 7, and we've been running around getting ready.

Both BossLady and her honey have Scottish ancestry and they both love parties and costumes, so they've requested that guests adhere to a suggested dress code. I forget what they're calling it, but Pirate and I have taken to referring to it as the "Haggis Hoedown". Requested dress is A) kilt with white shirt; B) jeans with white shirt; C) white sundress or blouse/skirt. Naturally, we looked at that and thought "Jeans? Pfft. White skirt? Prescription for a red-wine spill. But a kilt, now... hello!"

The components of my outfit: A white blouse with 3/4 length sleeves (the top one in this image):


A women's SportKilt in the California tartan:


My new Panama:


So the kilt is set (I hope; they omitted the belt loops the first time round and I had to send it back but they promised to get it to me by the 6th) and I've got the hat. I need to sew the blouse (planning to do Blouse Mark 1 as a test this week, then get fabric at Stonemountain & Daughter this weekend and make the real one).

But what about footwear? I considered gladiator sandals and decided against them and in favor of boots. Problem is, I have great big gunboats at the ends of my legs (convenient when it lets me fit into the smallest of the men's sizes of FiveFingers; not so convenient at other times) and the selection at Zappo's was a bit thin. It came down to two styles that seemed possible. One was kind of cowboyish:


The other one is much more Robin Hood (BossLady's observation):


Minor problem: this style is only available in my size in gray. Foo. I was resigning myself to the more cowboyish ones.

Until the thought occurred to me: I have a large bottle of black leather dye and I'm not afraid to use it.

So I ordered the gray ones.

BossLady thinks I should try wearing them in the original color — "Gray is a very useful color! It goes with camel, and yellow, and all kinds of other colors. You're right, you wear too much black. Try gray." So I will... while reserving the right to still dye them.

But like I said, I'm only sewing two blouses between now and then — of COURSE adding "dye boots" to the to-do list makes sense.

*sigh*